Adam Banks on African American language use online

Adam Banks' discussion of representations of Black English in online spaces was useful becaue it helped me think more critically about how identities are formed through written language. I think he makes a very insightful observation about how much of the critical commentary that addresses Black English has to do with spoken rather than written expressions. Indeed, it seems that in writing classes many have the stance of "it's okay to talk like that, but you'll need to learn to write like 'this' in our class." What is lost when we stifle certain modes of written expression for the sake of a dominant mode of expression? Online spaces not only provide a place for different kinds of ethnic written expression to flourish but they also allow members of ethnic communities to interact via these written expressions, potentially resulting in a cultural richness both represented in the space itself but also one that feedsback to the participants themselves. Writing, of course, is more than just physical representation of thought. Expressing oneself via "unrestricted" writing, especiall when interacting with others in writing, actually creats cultural richness, both in the written products that are created and in the act of creating for the participants. While this notion of writing is something that I have given some attention to in the past, I have never thought about what impact virtual spaces might have this kind of linguistic activity.

Ewriting Spaces as Safe, Gender-Fair Havens

The Tulley/Blair piece on Ewriting safe spaces really helped me come to a more specific understanding of my philosophy of teaching with technology. While the article as a whole was quite thought-provoking, I was particularly struck by the notion that the fulid, non-linier nature of hypertext does allow for the expression of multiple "voices," and it also provides a useful opportunity to experiment with combining the personal and the academic in writing, something that isn't easy to accomplish in a linier text.

One thing that has troubled me about using sophisticated technology in writing classes is how to assess student projects fairly. Some students come into the course with all kinds of technical skills while others come in with very few. Given the nature of the course - writing - it becomes difficult to zero in on student "writing" when many are so busy struggling with the technology that they struggle with the "writing" aspect of a given assignment. The Tulley/Blair article recommends using portfolio assessment as a solution to this issue, and I think it is a great idea. This allows students to work at different rates, so those that need a little extra time to figure out the technology can take the time and not feel rushed when it comes to the critical thinking of writing and/or crafting whatever the assignment is asking them to do. Having read about the theory behind this notion of assessment and participated in class like this, I feel strongly about its effectiveness as a means of providing fair and accurate assessment to all students.

Bolter: Part 2

Bolter's discussion of Ekphrasis really addresses an important point about how a newer media can remediate an older one. I think that a lot of popular writing has, as Bolter points out, taken a turn toward the visual in the last decade or so. The current ENG 111 Textbook comes to mind as a good example. So much of this text is purely visual explanation - flowcharts, photos, textual blurb boxes - and the raw textual elements, in many cases, are secondary to the visual elements, serving only to clarify what the visual has expressed. It's ironic, and beside the point of this reflection, that I still can't seem to get my students to open the book and "read" it.

I really enjoyed Bolter's example of Ekphrasis from the USA Today blurb about how often men shave on the weekends. From an information design standpoint, it actually makes a lot of sense to make use of the item being represented in the representation of some dataset about that item. Although, I'm sure there are scenarios where this could cause more harm than it does good, but it's still a revealing idea to think about.

Bolter: Writing Spaces - Pt. 1

Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space has by far been the juiciest read for me so far. The connections he makes between the history of writing – with particular attention to writing spaces – and the future of writing have long been a subject of great interest to me. As both an undergraduate and graduate student at UMD, I took several courses in Book History and New Media studies concurrently, which allowed me to think about the connections between historical media shifts and current ones. What is ironic, though, is that I never had the opportunity to read Bolter’s great book in any of those courses.

I also enjoy the insights that Bolter provides on the act of writing itself; I think that is really what makes his book so timeless. I think one his most exciting ideas about hypertext writing is when he compares linked Web pages to items in a sentence. There is a lot of potential here to begin thinking about “grammars” of connectivity in hypertext. What kinds of logic do people use when they make the decision to link one page to another? How would one describe those logics? Could one, with enough analysis and observation of various Web sites, begin to discern specific linking patterns that might vary by Web site type or genre (consumer Web sites, blogs, facebook, personal Web sites, etc.)? Would such a study be useful?

Bolter also tackles the issue of technological determinism. He argues against Walter Ong’s (and some others) notion of how “writing restructures consciousness” (19). Bolter argues that writing – in whatever form it happens to be taking at a given historical moment – does not on its own structure the way we think. Until I read this, I had always thought the opposite – that our thinking processes mirror our writing processes. Now, however, I think Bolter makes a more nuanced point: while writing does have its influence on our thinking, it does not act alone and it is a two-way street. Our thinking influences the act and form of writing, just as it influences and is influenced by other cultural phenomena.

Online Education

Having some experience with online education as an instructor for the University of Phoenix online and a tutor for smarthinking.com, I have kind of a soft spot in my heart for this new trend in education. Many detractors will argue that the intimacy and rapport that are so important in a “brick and mortar” classroom simply cannot be replicated in a completely virtual setting, which, for them, equates to a less valuable educational experience. Others worry about the learning curve of the technological apparatus itself, claiming that forcing students to learn the necessary communication skills distracts them from the content of the course. Also, there are the instructors to take into consideration. How will they be compensated? Will their work be valued the same as that of the in-person teacher? How will these instructors be trained?

Admittedly, these are all legitimate and responsible concerns, and we should be thankful of the raising of these questions.

I’d like to take this opportunity to draw on some of my experience with online learning to address some of these questions. While I have not officially been an online student, my intensive instructor training for the University of Phoenix allowed me to take the role of a student in a U of P class. For five weeks, I had to learn how to facilitate a U of P class by essentially taking a U of P class. I had certain responsibilities that I had to perform for the class each week. I had to read and respond to discussion question posed by my instructor and peers. I had to create documents and post them online for my instructor to provide feedback on. I had to learn to use the technological apparatus quickly so that I could focus more on the content of the course. It was challenging at first, but I caught on quickly – as did my peers in the course. By the time the course was over, I felt wonderfully prepared to facilitate my own course.

When I started facilitating my course – under the quiet supervision of my faculty mentor – I was able to help the students overcome the technological learning curve quickly because of my own experience being a student. I should also add because this was an introductory writing course, it was the first experience of online learning for most of my students. In fact, after a little frustration during the first week of figuring things out – with a lot of help from me and each other – things were great. Once we were all over the technological hump, we developed a great rapport because we had worked through our first problem together – and we were all amazed that we could do it considering we were reporting in from all corners of the country, never once speaking or seeing each other.

We – most of us anyway – maintained this collegiality for the duration of the ten week course. Indeed, the online discussions about the process of writing were often very engaging. Each week I would post two discussion questions meant to serve as jumping off points for the week’s discussions. Each night I would check in for about four hours and read all of the responses – both to my initial DQs and to one another – and it was very rewarding. The students brought in some material from their readings and, perhaps more importantly, from their various life experiences as we critically engaged each step of the writing process week after week.

To wrap this up then, from my perspective, the training, intimacy, rapport, and value of online education are just as meaningful and accomplishable as in-person teaching. In fact, I can honestly say that I have transferred much of what I learned from my experiences as an online educator to my in-person teaching.

Narratives: Little and Master

I found Inman's discussion of Lyodard's concept of the narrative fascinating. So many of us do measure ourselves against some kind of master narrative - like the traditional American dream. In doing so, we often find it difficult to measure up to this Mythic measure of success, and we also sometimes fail to think critically about what the consequences - both good and bad - of that kind of success are. Those who stumble on the path or become occupied in some specific aspect of life along the way are often marginalized, left in the dust of those who push forward towards syncing up with the great master narrative, comforting themselves with the knowledge that they have yet to stumble; they are still making headway toward success.

I think Inman's use of the post-modern little narrative in understanding the community of computers and composition really a healthy move. He is right in saying that the community should not be understood in monolithic terms; it is entirely too diverse and complicated for this kind of definition. Looking at the community as a network of small units allows us to see individual contributions to the community as the success stories they really are. I also think Inman is right when he acknowledges that to use a master narrative as a comparative measure of worth in computers in writing is unrealistic. The community is too broad and expansive for anything to really measure up this kind of narrative. It seems that any attempts to do so might only result in research that is so diffuse that it would lose any value to any specific area of computers and composition. Using little narratives as the measuring stick encourages people to do research on the things they are interested in. Little narratives allow for one's research to have a place to be noticed, a place where it can really make a difference no matter how specific it might be. I think this kind of dynamic and interactive approach to a scholarly community will result in a kind of authentic success that will really do the community and its participants

The Database and the Essay

Johndan Johnson-Eiola's utterly fascinating and complicated article "The Database and the Essay" explores the notions of information collection and connectivity as they occur in the economic sphere and the academic classroom. She argues that "we can't separate writing from the economic sphere" (212). Increasingly even the smallest pieces of information have monetary value attached to them. Many of us no longer buy music, for example, in collections, opting instead to purchase music by the song. Many academic publishers are cracking down on reprints of their intellectual property, even if these reprints are intended for educational purposes. According to Eiola, some publishers have even gone so far as to say "'you need to seek permission to quote even a single word from one of our texts'" (204).

This value associated with the smallest bits of information has huge implications for those of use in the business of writing - teaching, practicing, or otherwise. I think Eiola is right on the mark as she argues that we really do need bring the issue of economic value of intellectual property to the forefront in writing classrooms. The pervasive flow of information in our day-to-day lives makes it increasingly important for citizens to have a keen understanding of managing it all. A knowledge of the value attached to individual pieces of information will play an essential role in the in collections of information that emerge in our daily lives - Web sites, News, Databases, etc. As, Eiola notes, while the creation of original knowledge will continue to have value, the manipulation and collection of existing information towards useful ends will warrant increasing value, perhaps to the point of outshining the creation of original information.

If it seems like I am wandering here towards no particular point, it's because I don't quite have a lucid understanding of this "information" yet. All I know is that when I read this essay, all kinds of lights lit up in my head, all kinds of interesting connections to other cultural phenomena sprung to the forefront of my mind like random electrical sparks. I know that Eiola is on to something, but I struggle to hold that "something" firmly enough to have a good look at it. Perhaps the real value of here essay is in the little details that spark flashes of understanding in my mind as I read.

Perhaps I'll read more and gather more of these lucid flashes so that I might generate a larger dataset to arrange, rearrange and interpret, reinterpret, etc.

Computer Classroom Design

Linda Myers' article "Approaches to computer writing classrooms" really struck a chord with me. I had the opportunity to teach in a lab this morning, and I couldn't help noticing how much more demanding it felt. The brief instructions I tried to provide at the beginning of the class seemed to fall to the floor just after the words left my mouth. I looked out across the room, and all I saw was a sea of Apple computer monitors with little patches of hair just barely rising above them. I could barely see my students, and they couldn't really see - or hear - me very well either. I quickly realized that my usual strategy of standing at the front of the room and "broadcasting" instructions to the whole class wasn't the best strategy in a proscenium style computer lab. I ended up running around the room restating the instructions individually to students who couldn't really hear me when I addressed the whole class. It was all very inefficient.

While I have taught in computer labs several times before - I used to teach in one once a week at UMD - I haven't really had a clear sense of the particular demands each environment placed on me as a teacher. Perhaps because I teach in a lab less frequently now than I used to, the differences really came into sharp relief this morning after class when I felt exhausted after running around trying to keep my students on task.

I think that in future lab sessions I will prepare instructions ahead of time and post them online. This will hopefully allow students to work at their own pace by reading the instructions and completing the exercises on their own. Since the lab doesn't really foster a good teacher-addressing-all-students-at-once approach, I will simply transform my words into documents that effectively address each student on a one-to-one basis.

Online Language

In his article, "Meeting the Paradox of Computer-Mediated Communication in Writing Instruction," Stuart Blythe discusses, among other things, the unique features of language as it's used in online communication. He says, "Linguistically, CMC can be characterized as a hybrid that sits somewhere between talk and writing" (119). Indeed, CMC has no real world equivalent. While chat room communication may take on some characteristics of a face-to-face discussion, it has some distinct differences. For example, we lose the benefit of non-verbal cues that we rely on during a face-to-face chat. However, it's not the same as any other form of written correspondence either. When we send an instant written message to someone, we expect a reply in pretty short order - usually in a matter of seconds. Also, the typing demands of instant messaging are creating a new type of virtual short hand - lol, brb, U, etc. The pressure of matching the response time of verbal communication with typewritten communication actually seems to be reducing written words to their essential communicative cues. One could make a fairly convincing argument for the case that what is occurring here is really the formation of a sort of pigeon language. Rather than this being a language developing out of the communication needs of speakers of differing languages attempting to interact, we have a language drawing on several modes of communication to meet the needs of an entirely new and unique mode of communication.

Indeed, I have already seen several instances of virtual language interference in the writings of my freshman, here at BG and elsewhere. Some of them occasionally lose track of the mode they are working in and use abbreviations like "U" instead of "you" or "B" instead of "be" in their academic writing. While this was pretty alarming to me when I first encountered it, I have to admit that I find it kind of fascinating at the same time. It's amazing to witness and even participate in all of these new communication circumstances as they act on language and force it to do new things. Many argue that this kind of language on the net - and its increasing appearances off the net - is diminishing the richness of the English (or other) language, but I would argue that the expressive potential of language is actually increasing. Before CMC, language never had to do what it is doing now; the truncated expressions and other emerging features of CMC are not rotting away the existing expressive power of language, they are simply adding new expressive techniques to meet the needs of new mode of communication.

While Blythe does briefly touch on this in his article, David Crystal's book The Language of the Internet provides a more thorough and insightful study of this emerging language of the Internet.

Technology: Being the First is Being the Best

I think Inman's point about the relationship between technological practices and President Kennedy’s assertion of America being first to the moon has significant implications about how we think about technology in general. When I really think hard about what landing on the moon really meant for us as a nation, I see no direct benefit. The benefits are all psychological. Did landing on the moon first really prevent Russia from attacking us? Probably not. Did we receive any military advantage at all from landing on the Moon first? Again, probably not.

I guess my point is that the impact of "us" landing on the moon before "them" didn't have a physical consequence in the same way, for example, that creating the first atomic bomb did. I do think, however, that there were definitely cultural consequences (good and bad) that resulted from the event. Perhaps a carry over from the Bombs that ended World War II, I think that America needed reassurance that we were still the strongest, and in order to that we had to be the "first." Thus, getting there first, assured Americans that we were still invulnerable to the instability of the rest of the World. I think this mentality has rippled forward in time in parallel with technological advancement. In other words, I think that part of the drive for technological advancement or even the drive of consumers to have the latest technology derives from the need to be better or the need to be a step ahead of the "others."

Indeed, there seems to be an embedded sense of "us" and "them" in technological implementations. For example, many universities market themselves as having more or better technology available to students compared to other universities. Hardware and software producers also use this paradigm of thought - "Our laptops are 1.3% faster than Dell's." It always comes down to "us" and "them" as well as "more," faster," "smaller," "lighter," etc.

While this mentality seems to have fueled great technological innovation over the past several decades, I think it is important to also think about the consequences of this way of thinking. At what cost - environmental, geo-political, humanitarian, etc. do these great technological innovations come to us. Also, considering these costs, do we have a greater responsibility to use these innovations to create some sort of net gain? I think this has important implications for us as educators. When our institutions insist on investing and reinvesting in technological upgrades, we almost have an obligation to make the most constructive uses of these technological possible.

Thought's on Digital Literacies in the University

While there were many things competing for my attention from this week's readings, there is one particular thing that still lingers in my thoughts as we look forward to week four. In Cynthia Selfe's intriguing case study of David's experience in college, she makes the point that David did not succeed because his literacies were not valued by instructors who were teaching his courses. They did not appreciate his abilities in Web "design" and were only interested in his ability to master the literacies they were addressing in their courses. Selfe seems to fault his instructors because they "failed to take advantage of, build on, and even to recognize, in some cases, the literacy strengths he [brought] to the classroom" (51). While Selfe's overall point that the academy should recognize and more prominantly value digital literacies is quite valid, I think her faulting of David's intructors is a little unjust.

Selfe describes David's Literacies in the following way:

"David was confident in using several word-processing packages like Microsoft Word to compose documents; WebChat to speak with others synchronously on teh World Wide Web; Poser, Bryce, and Photoshop to create various kinds of representations; and HTML, Java, and Shockwave to design Web Documents" (45-46).

While she does use verbs like "compose," "speak," "create," and "Design," which imply that these are intellectual literacies, her overall description seems to more explicity express that David was simply proficient at using these pieces of software and coding languages. The active verb "using" seems to trump the verbs that follow it. She spends little time discussing how proficient David became in the "design" or "crafting" aspects of using these tools, other than to say that he was being paid by certain organizations for his work. Isn't there a difference between knowing how to "build" something and knowing how to "design" something? Do architects and building contractors not employ drastically different "literacies" as they engage in their professions? Given that David was attending a University, is there not the expectation that he develop multiple literacies (not just digital ones) and that these literacies should involve something more advanced than just basic instrumental usage of tools? Would we be satisfied if our freshman writing courses only expected students to have proficiency in using Microsoft Word without knowing much about the actual craft of writing?

I do not intend for this to undermine Selfe's larger point that we should place a higher value on digital literacies in our curricula and recognize and foster them in our students. But I think we need to be careful not to displace the more intellectually demanding literacies of college with basic lessons of "know how." When so many of us struggle to keep up with the basic "know how" of emerging technologies that might be applicable to a college writing course, it is easy to over value a student's proficincy for knowing how to use tools to create a Web site. Nevertheless, I think it's crucial that we expect creative use of technological tools in order to foster more advanced digital (and other) literacies than just basic "know how." Furthermore, we should not allow our classes to beocme consumed with addessing digital literacies. While they are increasingly important, traditional academic writing literacies are still equally valid. Thus, I don't think we should simply allow students to substitute their digital literacies (however developed they may be) for the more traditional writing literacies we commonly teach in freshman writing. In fact addressing them both (digital and traditional), and looking at how they relate and interact, would probably be the most productive and interesting way to approach this situation.

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